Synopsis: “In the tradition of Divergent comes a novel about a world where negative emotions are stolen … and only those with fury can stand up and fight.

Eighteen-year-old Josephine Luquet wakes naked and covered in blood that is not hers on the same day every year—when the blood moon is full. Josi has not responded to the “Cure”—an immunization against anger mandated by the government—and believes herself to be a threat to others.

Then she meets Luke. Luke has had the Cure but seems different to the other “drones”—and he’s dead set on helping Josi discover the truth about herself before the next blood moon.

But time is running out. Is Luke willing to risk his life to be near her? Does he truly understand what violence she is capable of?

Raw and full of passion, Fury is a story of love in a dystopian world, and how much we are willing to forgive in the struggle to remember our humanity.

This is a novella-length episode of Fury. It will continue with Episode 2 on 18 March and conclude with Episode 3 on 25 March. Please visitwww.momentumbooks.com.au/authors/char… for release dates, further information, and to sign-up to be notified of the next release.” (Taken from Goodreads)

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Fury: Episode 1 is the first novella length episode of a book that was released throughout March 2014. It follows the story of a girl named Josephine Luquet, who has been living inside an asylum for almost a year. She spends her only available time outside of her room with a psychologist that has been ‘cured’ of anger, as every other citizen within her world is required to be. The reader learns about Josephine and her life prior to being locked up through her stories with her psychologist, and the fear she experiences as the blood moon approaches closer and closer. For when it reaches September 16th, a whole new person takes over Josi and she kills without realising it. This, we soon learn, is called Fury.

I was interested in this book because it was being marketed as similar to Divergent. Unfortunately, I was unable to really get into the first episode of this book at all. I felt extremely disconnected as I was really confused with the story – it’s told from the perspectives of three people – Josi, her psychologist Anthony, and a man named Luke. The story revolves around Josi telling Anthony about her relationship with Luke, for the privilege of a phone call with him, and for Anthony to believe her about her psychotic tendencies when September 16th rolls around. However, Anthony who is considered a drone as he is cured of all angry emotions, refuses to believe Josi and only attempts to categorise her symptoms into understandable medical reasoning.

The thing I disliked most about this first episode was the way the story is set out. Josi’s storytelling is told in diary format with dates at the start of each section. This is odd because essentially in present time, she is meant to be telling it while she sits in a chair in Anthony’s office of the asylum. So why is it in diary format, and why is there someone else’s perspective included in her memories? This makes no sense at all – how would she have known what was going on in Luke’s head?

The world-building was also a little lacking. I still do not know why Josi is stuck in that asylum, and there was only a brief mention of why ‘the cure’ was administered. I’m unsure as to why this cure does not affect Josi, and why The Bloods (the policing force in Josi’s world) go out of their ways to kill the uncured instead of just curing them. Then we are randomly introduced to ‘The Furies’, who we are told are the uncured citizens that have turned cannibalistic – but why?! There was also a brief mention of ‘The Resistors’ who sacrificed themselves to basically show Josi they existed. What are the links between all these people? I’m just so confused.

Plot wise, Josi meets a guy named Luke at a bar, and he immediately takes an interest in her and follows her home…only to come back the next day and knock on her door. When she demands to know how he knew which apartment number she lived in, he admits to watching her enter her home the previous night. For someone who we are told is a genius (she has eidetic memory), she is quite stupid to trust someone like that after going on about how she’s never trusted anyone before because they’re all drones without the ability to feel anger. Yes, trust the first stalker you meet then.

What’s more is that Luke keeps coming back, and even breaks into her apartment! What in the world. You know someone is as crazy as you when you tell them you have serial killer tendencies that you don’t fully remember about, and they still fall in love with you (or insta-lust at least). Luke manages to convince Josi to move into his super awesome penthouse apartment that he can afford because he works for the government or something like that – but you know what? He never seems to actually go to work. Plus he refuses to talk about his family, and makes it his life mission to figure out why Josi is killing people every year, but have no recollection of it.

As much as I think all three characters are crazy, I did like the fact that they all had their own distinct voices. Not once did I mix them up when perspectives changed. They all have their own secrets, and McConaghy portrayed their fear, emotions -or lack of) very well.

Overall, this episode raised more questions than it answered. Unfortunately, I did not enjoy it enough to pick up the second episode, which I hope for other readers will answer some of these questions. The lack of world-building and even plot kept me from enjoying Fury: Episode 1. But the biggest concern was the way the storytelling was formated. It was awkward and very odd with perspectives that do not make sense. The writing is solid, but this was just not the book for me.

Thank you to Momentum Books for providing an ecopy in exchange for an honest review.

Joy is the head honcho of Thoughts By J. Her favourite genres are fantasy, sci-fi, mysteries, and the occasional romance that makes her heart beat faster. You'll find she's quite sporadic with her blog posts, but will definitely find the time to reply to all your comments, and visit your blogs...it's just a matter of when.

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The books and items reviewed on Thoughts By J are purchased by us unless explicitly specified. We occasionally receive books for review from Australian publishers in exchange for an honest review. Thoughts By J does not receive monetary compensation for our reviews or posts.